Mobility, self-service and business intelligence are important client demands when big and unstructured data is processed, and information management services company PBT Group aims to meet these demands to capture growth in its sector, says PBT business intelligence specialist Martin Rennhackkamp.

“PBT Group was business intelligence focused and had a small application development component as part of the business. However, through the acquisition of [Microsoft partner software developer] CyberPro, we aim to grow the application development component of the business and capture the growth arising from the blurring of business intelligence and applications, which is a significant trend in the industry,” he highlights.

The acquisitions of IBM business partner and business intelligence software company TBIS, SAP-accredited specialist business intelligence consultancy BI Blue and CyberPro were important for PBT Group, as the company can serve niche markets and round out its service offering for large vendor products, says Rennhackkamp.

“The interesting side of big data for us is the use of business intelligence in business intel- ligence applications and in normal applications. This functionality requires the linking and tight integration of a business’s databases and we are well positioned in that field,” he notes.

One of the drivers behind mobility and busi- ness intelligence applications is the use of tablet smart devices by company personnel who want to interact with the data displayed on the devices and not merely read the information.

“Mobility is interesting for us, as users of business intelligence applications want to query and comment on a figure, initiate a work process, place an order to buy stock and collaborate on workpieces with other personnel.”

Further, PBT Group’s customers are demanding that business intelligence data and protocols be fed back to their operations and sundry work applications to deal with their clients in greater detail in any of their divisions, including call centres, daily operations and stock management, among others, says Rennhackkamp.

“Our customers want to be able to feed the information it gains from its business intelligence processes back into, for example, their call centres to see how much stock a client bought, the client’s payment turnaround times, how long the client has worked with the company, the time needed for delivery, whether there is any credit risk and a host of other details,” he explains.

PBT Group foresees more business intelligence being closely tied to applications development and expects good growth from the synergies provided by its new acquisitions, concludes Rennhackkamp.